My concern is that those paperwhite controlers are going to turn a disgusting brown as dirt and skin acids build up over a couple of months. Grey would have been a better choice, cause nobody is gonna want to touch the thing after a year of use.
yeah, then you have to go buy a new set! available in white only -- at least from MSFT
i like s florida for its shamelessness and the girls are gorgeous and the club scene is great in miami and people drive nice cars and the golf courses are nice and the water is bright frikkin' blue
i sympathize with the spammers... who wants to work hard in the sunshine?
only the hurricanes are a bummer
and imho if the world has to have a spam capital, I'd rather have it here in the US than abroad -- spam isn't going to disappear if we clear up South Florida
read this fun slate article about election fraud and its history in florida...
they couldn't beat or break open source so now they have to work with it
makes sense really -- for years they had no serious competition -- they still don't on the desktop
but the mac's recent resurgence on the desktop and the rise of linux and BSD on servers has to be dealt with -- how could microsoft not have an OSS and OS X lab?
My view is that because of the strength of the judicial system, the US Patent Office is effectively the world's Patent Office. The patent office must be beleagured by hundreds of thousands of applications every year.
Given that patent officers are bureaucrats and not technical experts, and that companies and individuals file patents for almost anything, it's not surprising that so many bullshit patents are granted.
The US IP system definitely need restructuring. But it is important to remember that patents are useful in and of themselves. Often they can be very empowering.
In India, Dr Mashelkar is leading a patent revolution . I saw him speak a few years ago, and he had some very cool things to say. In Indian labs, nobody ever bothered to patent anything, so all our R&D was poached by people abroad. Since Mashelkar's crusade, our labs have since reformed themselves, and everybody has benefited.
Is there any software that can convert a trackpad into a medium for handwriting recognition?
a key selling feature of these tablet PCs is that handwriting complex equations (eg when sitting in a classroom taking notes for CS/Math/Econ) is much easier when you can just jot it down.
If my ibook came with a stylus and a means for writing these eqns down on my trackpad (and then saving them as an image//handwriting recognition for symbols etc) -- I think the usability would go through the roof...
I switched to Gmail for the whole 1Gb thing, but have stuck with it (and now prefer it to my yahoo and other domain email addresses in thunderbird) because of the interface.
It's just so much more intuitive -- never again to I have to deal with the 'size' of emails -- and the whole archive/thread thing was a litte uncomfortable at first, but is now so natural.
So although I do have a yahoo! account, I don't think I'll be switching back anytime soon.
After switching to OS X a few months ago, I've discovered that I no longer miss the right mouse button!
One excellent reason is the terminal Another is the fact that control click, command click and option click all do the same things in pretty much every program (I can't say what exactly, it's that intuitive)
All I know is that when I want a new tab in firefox instead of a new window, I always make the right kind of click
nevertheless, I like multibutton mice, and now that I see this discussion on slashdot, I'm going to go get me a USB wireless mouse with a scroll wheel. I've forgotten how nice those were...
afaik the only way to run wine on linux-ppc (WINE is not an emulator, and so is x86 dependent) is by using qemu...
also check out darwine... integrated qemu + wine under OS X so you can http://darwine.opendarwin.org/ click on windows apps and run them seamlessly in OS X
is to negotiate good contracts with hardware manufacturers and software companies so computers and peripherals become cheaper for students
i go to UCLA and it's lame that the only hardware discounts we get are 15% off apple products. This is the only 'discount' we get AFAIK. Over at USC each student can buy two ipods for $150 each -- so if your school has the buying power, use the leverage and hook your students up.
Another real cool thing to do is to give away the old hardware to cs/cse students etc. I had some real fun clustering old pentiums thrown away by school -- but if I hadn't known the professor getting rid of them, they would have ended up straight in the trash.
Finally, have your school adopt a single Linux distro and open a Linux comp lab for general students, not just the engineers who demand it. I find Gnome and KDE far easier to use than macintoshes, if only because they parallel windows so closely in terms of UI.
Last but not least, if you're going to have an apple lab, at least unleash some of the power of the mac with photoshop etc and it would be nice if i could use the shell for anything useful --
Only moaning because I'm sitting in a mac lab during finals week and can't use these fscking boxes to program anything....
From the article.... In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality computer chip that is much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today's electronics.
So a chip more resistant to extreme conditions is also somehow 'lighter' and 'smarter'...
A good step forward for science, but not for science journalism...
http://messenger.indiatimes.com/ the indiatimes messenger (though bloated and malware in itself) somehow manages to successfully log you on to the indiatimes network, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and AOL.
It's a nice workaround though the client is quite ugly. The developers are geodesic software... I don't know Trillian's capabilities but this software bridges all IM networks quite successfully.
A discussion of why ettiquete breaks down BECAUSE OF new technology is as important as the one we have beeen having on slashdot upto now.
In India, economic liberalization has only recently bought us phones and cellphones that work consistently and don't cross-connect. I remember a time when if it was raining out there was only a 50% chance you could pick up the phone and have it work, and I'm only 20 years old. In my district in Mumbai alone there was a waiting list of almost 3000 people waiting to be 'assigned' a phone (the old analog exchanges could only handle ~1000 lines each), and it often took a series of bribes over a period of MONTHS to have your phone installed or fixed.
Consequently, most people my age and above remember a time when a telephone call was a 'luxury.' Therefore our telephone ettiquete is excellent -- if you call an older person and something goes wrong, he or she will wait for you to call back (rather than impulsively dialing your number and 'jamming' the network), people will always take and convey detailed messages, and if the person you are calling is in but not near the phone, they will never hang up.
On the flip side, my roommates in America refuse to answer the phone unless it is for them -- thanks to caller id and that innate American selfishness. Consequently many important calls are missed in our household because I am out and nobody else recognizes the number.
If it's my property, don't I have the right to lock it away?
Well, you have the right to suppress your work for the copyright term, after which it enters the public domain. But when the copyright term is longer than both your life and the life of most of the people who remember your work and want it redistributed, you are obviously inhibiting fair use.
A good example from my life is that of my favourite Roger Moore movie 'Wild Geese.' An errant VHS player chewed up my copy a while ago and to get a new VHS (used) is costing me $50. Thank God for the internet, or I would probably not have been able to even find a copy. The only reason I even have a VHS player anymore is so that I can watch this movie. And finally, given that it is used, who knows what the quality will be like?
It's eminently possible that when the copyright reaches the public domain in ~50 years, there actually won't be any copies left anywhere, and the studio copy, if stored badly, will be destroyed. Ridiculous IMHO.
I happen to be an American citizen born in America (and a Republican voter to boot), who studies in America and lives in India. So I have both angles covered here.
Let me begin by saying that I have a 10 year work permit for India and it took me all of two days and 5 bucks in postage stamps to get it.
My friends have had hell trying to get student visas, forget H1Bs. They are submitted to such embarrasment as showing bank balances to prove they can afford the entire college course (not, say 20gs for one year, but 100gs for all four!). If they don't shave or come for their interviews wearing shorts, they are often rejected for their I-20s despite having all the necessary credentials.
A friend of mine got rejected for renewal of his I-20 -- after having been in American college for two years, he was rejected when reapplying for his third. The interviewer asked him if he was planning on living in America after college, and he said no, I don't like America all that much, and so was rejected!
Another friend was rejected on the basis that his father is self-employed. The interviewer said that since you are going to take over your father's business anyway, why go to college?
Yet another of my friends decided to go to England over America because the visa officer indirectly hinted that she was going to America to look for a husband with an American passport.
I like America, and am proud to be, but the INS really is the worst, most incompetent and most impolite immigration service I have encountered yet. As an American, I throw a fit when a foreign visa office treats me badly --but look at the humiliation my own doles out. It's disgusting.
The saddest story is of a friend of mine who goes to a large state school. He got trashed one night in college and some friend of his tore out his visa from his passport. He reported it to the INS who required that he leave the country before they issued him a new one. He ended up losing a year of college and a year of fees to the INS.
Makes me sick as an American. All I can say is, power to those who endure the punishing visa process -- they desrve the bloody jobs after all that!
I have owned now three subsequent GSM generations of Motorola phones -- starting with the clunky big StarTac, moving on to the little one, and then finally settling on one the Motorola tribands ( I am in and out of the US a lot ).
I have hated all but the first with a passion, and for only one reason -- interface design. Everything about these phones was non-intuitive and counterintelligent. To read ones own text messages would take at least 5 keypresses. The phone book display was set up so that only part of the number could be seen at one time, seriously stressing my short term memory.
Most irritating was the fact that the Yes and No buttons are inverted on Motos (vs. Sony Ericsson or Nokia) and hence when others would answer my phone for me, they would often disconnect the calling party.
I have since jumped ship to Nokia, now that their tribands are affordable, and have never been happier.
Somehow I predict a similar convoluted and dire interface (not to mention closed to the average hacker) for Moto's linux solution. Don't be too excited, I've worked with Motorola phones before, and hope to never again.
May I also add that India's external finances are in great shape ( a $6.5tn deficit comes to mind, cough cough ) and we are at present reorganizing our expensive debt.
We are sitting on so much cash, (and soon, low interest debt) that for the first time, India has become a lender nation.
Inflation is static at just under 2%, the Indian rupee has been holding its ground against all international currencies. Duties are being lowered, tariffs and trade barriers are being slashed, capital and bond markets are flourishing -- why the hell can't we have a moon mission?
Agreed, poverty and health problems cannot be disregarded, but to say this money would be better spent anywhere else is just stupidity -- India has long prided herself on her space programme -- we have great comm satellites and have been launching them since the early '70s, and a moon probe is a logical next step.
Finally, the moon probe is just one proposal among many, and slashdot readers, or at least those posting derogatory comments, need to keep a sense of proportion.
Slashdot Mirror
My concern is that those paperwhite controlers are going to turn a disgusting brown as dirt and skin acids build up over a couple of months. Grey would have been a better choice, cause nobody is gonna want to touch the thing after a year of use.
yeah, then you have to go buy a new set!
available in white only -- at least from MSFT
i like s florida
... who wants to work hard in the sunshine?
for its shamelessness
and the girls are gorgeous
and the club scene is great in miami
and people drive nice cars
and the golf courses are nice
and the water is bright frikkin' blue
i sympathize with the spammers
only the hurricanes are a bummer
and imho if the world has to have a spam capital, I'd rather have it here in the US than abroad -- spam isn't going to disappear if we clear up South Florida
read this fun slate article about election fraud and its history in florida...
they couldn't beat or break open source
so now they have to work with it
makes sense really -- for years they had no serious competition -- they still don't on the desktop
but the mac's recent resurgence on the desktop and the rise of linux and BSD on servers has to be dealt with -- how could microsoft not have an OSS and OS X lab?
My view is that because of the strength of the judicial system, the US Patent Office is effectively the world's Patent Office. The patent office must be beleagured by hundreds of thousands of applications every year.
Given that patent officers are bureaucrats and not technical experts, and that companies and individuals file patents for almost anything, it's not surprising that so many bullshit patents are granted.
The US IP system definitely need restructuring. But it is important to remember that patents are useful in and of themselves. Often they can be very empowering.
In India, Dr Mashelkar is leading a patent revolution . I saw him speak a few years ago, and he had some very cool things to say. In Indian labs, nobody ever bothered to patent anything, so all our R&D was poached by people abroad. Since Mashelkar's crusade, our labs have since reformed themselves, and everybody has benefited.
eagerly anticipate a dirk gently movie
the Dirk Gently novels strike me as being far more easily translatable to the screen than the H2G2 series
For some reason hollywood has stopped making chandler-esque movies, maybe a Dirk movie could revive the genre
but we should /. the un website
maybe they will write a resolution demanding we stop...
Is there any software that can convert
a trackpad into a medium for handwriting recognition?
a key selling feature of these tablet PCs is that handwriting complex equations (eg when sitting in a classroom taking notes for CS/Math/Econ) is much easier when you can just jot it down.
If my ibook came with a stylus and a means for writing these eqns down on my trackpad (and then saving them as an image//handwriting recognition for symbols etc) -- I think the usability would go through the roof...
Any observations/Recommendations?
studying for finals
...
imho the windows already wobble
I switched to Gmail for the whole 1Gb thing, but have stuck with it (and now prefer it to my yahoo and other domain email addresses in thunderbird) because of the interface.
It's just so much more intuitive -- never again to I have to deal with the 'size' of emails -- and the whole archive/thread thing was a litte uncomfortable at first, but is now so natural.
So although I do have a yahoo! account, I don't think I'll be switching back anytime soon.
Unless of course, they decide to offer 10 Gb!
can anyone detail software optmized to take advantage of the 3D display technology
I've never heard of any software (CAD/CAM included) that is optimized for 3D glasses -- what utility does the A3CLU add to the computing experience?
And what linux apps are optimized for this? It would seem a bit of a waste if the only 3D tools were, say, KDE Widgets...
Besides the cool factor that is...
After switching to OS X a few months ago, I've discovered that I no longer miss the right mouse button!
One excellent reason is the terminal
Another is the fact that control click, command click and option click all do the same things in pretty much every program (I can't say what exactly, it's that intuitive)
All I know is that when I want a new tab in firefox instead of a new window, I always make the right kind of click
nevertheless, I like multibutton mice, and now that I see this discussion on slashdot, I'm going to go get me a USB wireless mouse with a scroll wheel. I've forgotten how nice those were...
welcome our new Google overlords...
Seriously though, I don't want to store my pr0n remotely! And be targetted by ads while watching it!
And imagine if the RIAA or MPAA subpeonaed Google to find filesharers! Oh man oh man.
IMHO the law is not ready for the return to the thin client.
afaik the only way to run wine on linux-ppc (WINE is not an emulator, and so is x86 dependent) is by using qemu...
also check out darwine... integrated qemu + wine under OS X so you can http://darwine.opendarwin.org/ click on windows apps and run them seamlessly in OS X
fabrice bellard is a processor emulating god imho
I've never understood the significant advantages of branded *nixes over BSD and linux.
What are the advantages of Solaris over, say, SuSe?
My school runs Solaris, and I find it to be a solid *nix, but why would anyone pay (a large sum of) money for it?
Extend the argument for AIX and HPUX as well...
IMHO this is a good strategy by Sun to keep their OS alive...
is to negotiate good contracts with hardware manufacturers and software companies so computers and peripherals become cheaper for students
i go to UCLA and it's lame that the only hardware discounts we get are 15% off apple products. This is the only 'discount' we get AFAIK. Over at USC each student can buy two ipods for $150 each -- so if your school has the buying power, use the leverage and hook your students up.
Another real cool thing to do is to give away the old hardware to cs/cse students etc. I had some real fun clustering old pentiums thrown away by school -- but if I hadn't known the professor getting rid of them, they would have ended up straight in the trash.
Finally, have your school adopt a single Linux distro and open a Linux comp lab for general students, not just the engineers who demand it. I find Gnome and KDE far easier to use than macintoshes, if only because they parallel windows so closely in terms of UI.
Last but not least, if you're going to have an apple lab, at least unleash some of the power of the mac with photoshop etc and it would be nice if i could use the shell for anything useful --
Only moaning because I'm sitting in a mac lab during finals week and can't use these fscking boxes to program anything....
From the article....
In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality computer chip that is much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today's electronics.
So a chip more resistant to extreme conditions is also somehow 'lighter' and 'smarter'...
A good step forward for science, but not for science journalism...
http://messenger.indiatimes.com/
the indiatimes messenger (though bloated and malware in itself) somehow manages to successfully log you on to the indiatimes network, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and AOL.
It's a nice workaround though the client is quite ugly. The developers are geodesic software... I don't know Trillian's capabilities but this software bridges all IM networks quite successfully.
Does this also mean that there has been some kind of demographic shift too, along with the 'generational shift' from movies to music?
Also is this some kind of silent protest against gator style spyware embedded in Kazaa?
Or as RIAA tactics target one section of users using a particular P2P network (sic), they shift alleigances to another?
CNET article is nice but typically lacking on details...
A discussion of why ettiquete breaks down BECAUSE OF new technology is as important as the one we have beeen having on slashdot upto now.
In India, economic liberalization has only recently bought us phones and cellphones that work consistently and don't cross-connect. I remember a time when if it was raining out there was only a 50% chance you could pick up the phone and have it work, and I'm only 20 years old. In my district in Mumbai alone there was a waiting list of almost 3000 people waiting to be 'assigned' a phone (the old analog exchanges could only handle ~1000 lines each), and it often took a series of bribes over a period of MONTHS to have your phone installed or fixed.
Consequently, most people my age and above remember a time when a telephone call was a 'luxury.' Therefore our telephone ettiquete is excellent -- if you call an older person and something goes wrong, he or she will wait for you to call back (rather than impulsively dialing your number and 'jamming' the network), people will always take and convey detailed messages, and if the person you are calling is in but not near the phone, they will never hang up.
On the flip side, my roommates in America refuse to answer the phone unless it is for them -- thanks to caller id and that innate American selfishness. Consequently many important calls are missed in our household because I am out and nobody else recognizes the number.
If it's my property, don't I have the right to lock it away?
Well, you have the right to suppress your work for the copyright term, after which it enters the public domain. But when the copyright term is longer than both your life and the life of most of the people who remember your work and want it redistributed, you are obviously inhibiting fair use.
A good example from my life is that of my favourite Roger Moore movie 'Wild Geese.' An errant VHS player chewed up my copy a while ago and to get a new VHS (used) is costing me $50. Thank God for the internet, or I would probably not have been able to even find a copy. The only reason I even have a VHS player anymore is so that I can watch this movie. And finally, given that it is used, who knows what the quality will be like?
It's eminently possible that when the copyright reaches the public domain in ~50 years, there actually won't be any copies left anywhere, and the studio copy, if stored badly, will be destroyed. Ridiculous IMHO.
ha ha i'm waiting for the day i see a girl carrying this watch in her handbag...
conservative forums/blogs
try oxblog.blogspot.com
or www.andrewsullivan.com
or www.realclearpolitics.com
or www.instapundit.com
I happen to be an American citizen born in America (and a Republican voter to boot), who studies in America and lives in India. So I have both angles covered here.
Let me begin by saying that I have a 10 year work permit for India and it took me all of two days and 5 bucks in postage stamps to get it.
My friends have had hell trying to get student visas, forget H1Bs. They are submitted to such embarrasment as showing bank balances to prove they can afford the entire college course (not, say 20gs for one year, but 100gs for all four!). If they don't shave or come for their interviews wearing shorts, they are often rejected for their I-20s despite having all the necessary credentials.
A friend of mine got rejected for renewal of his I-20 -- after having been in American college for two years, he was rejected when reapplying for his third. The interviewer asked him if he was planning on living in America after college, and he said no, I don't like America all that much, and so was rejected!
Another friend was rejected on the basis that his father is self-employed. The interviewer said that since you are going to take over your father's business anyway, why go to college?
Yet another of my friends decided to go to England over America because the visa officer indirectly hinted that she was going to America to look for a husband with an American passport.
I like America, and am proud to be, but the INS really is the worst, most incompetent and most impolite immigration service I have encountered yet. As an American, I throw a fit when a foreign visa office treats me badly --but look at the humiliation my own doles out. It's disgusting.
The saddest story is of a friend of mine who goes to a large state school. He got trashed one night in college and some friend of his tore out his visa from his passport. He reported it to the INS who required that he leave the country before they issued him a new one. He ended up losing a year of college and a year of fees to the INS.
Makes me sick as an American. All I can say is, power to those who endure the punishing visa process -- they desrve the bloody jobs after all that!
I have owned now three subsequent GSM generations of Motorola phones -- starting with the clunky big StarTac, moving on to the little one, and then finally settling on one the Motorola tribands ( I am in and out of the US a lot ) .
I have hated all but the first with a passion, and for only one reason -- interface design. Everything about these phones was non-intuitive and counterintelligent. To read ones own text messages would take at least 5 keypresses. The phone book display was set up so that only part of the number could be seen at one time, seriously stressing my short term memory.
Most irritating was the fact that the Yes and No buttons are inverted on Motos (vs. Sony Ericsson or Nokia) and hence when others would answer my phone for me, they would often disconnect the calling party.
I have since jumped ship to Nokia, now that their tribands are affordable, and have never been happier.
Somehow I predict a similar convoluted and dire interface (not to mention closed to the average hacker) for Moto's linux solution. Don't be too excited, I've worked with Motorola phones before, and hope to never again.
For all those who have been whining about the state of India's finances and poverty levels, let me add that the PM in his Independence Day speech (think State of the Union) is also building highways, creating jobs in rural areas, not to mention modernizing our ports and major airports.
May I also add that India's external finances are in great shape ( a $6.5tn deficit comes to mind, cough cough ) and we are at present reorganizing our expensive debt.
We are sitting on so much cash, (and soon, low interest debt) that for the first time, India has become a lender nation.
Inflation is static at just under 2%, the Indian rupee has been holding its ground against all international currencies. Duties are being lowered, tariffs and trade barriers are being slashed, capital and bond markets are flourishing -- why the hell can't we have a moon mission?
Agreed, poverty and health problems cannot be disregarded, but to say this money would be better spent anywhere else is just stupidity -- India has long prided herself on her space programme -- we have great comm satellites and have been launching them since the early '70s, and a moon probe is a logical next step.
Finally, the moon probe is just one proposal among many, and slashdot readers, or at least those posting derogatory comments, need to keep a sense of proportion.